July 9. Today is one of the last forums for the people to express their concerns for the dam. I was initially excited to address everyone’s concerns, but sadden that my time to interact with the people is coming to an end. During the forum, everything was going well, not very many people asked us about the environmental aspects of the dam rather they were mainly concerned about the costs and benefits of the dam. The Brazilian president answered everything without hesitation and was able to please his people. However, a turn of events occurred once each of the leaders of the Kayapo tribe came to the front and began to speak in perfect Portuguese: “we kindly ask the Brazilian government to consider us, your neighbors, before you build the dam. …show more content…
James might be influenced by the linear evolutionary theory, which goes along with the idea of co-evalness. To some anthropologists, it use to be thought that humans evolved from an uncivilized, cave-man to a modern and civilized person. It is sometimes believed that this transition into modernism occurs at different rates thus tribes or groups of humans that do not live in complete modern lives, they are behind and are completely uncivilized. This relates to co-evalness because by thinking that the people are living in different times while inhabiting the same area, they are denying the thought of co-evalness. To live in co-evalness, James as well as the Brazilian government has to believe that they are at the same point in evolution; the Kayapo aren’t the uncivilized group while the Brazilians are civilized and modern group. However, rather than the linear evolutionary theory being thought as a binary, it should be at least thought as a fluid scale. The Kayapo aren’t completely modern but they do understand the technologies being used and if they were to decide to use it, they can. The thought of the linear theory being a scale is unthinkable to those who are use to separating things into two categories, in this case, modern or unmodern. By not considering or even thinking that a group can be between these categories, makes it difficult to understand how the Kayapo can keep both their cultural traditions while also introducing items from modern